Introduction

August 2000
September 2000
October 2000
November 2000
December 2000
January 2001
February 2001
March 2001
April 2001
May 2001
June 2001
July 2001
August 2001

February 2001

4 February 2001

10 February 2001

17 February 2001

18 February 2001

22 February 2001

27 February 2001

4 February 2001
Saturday

Wooo, I'm starting a new month!

That's about all there is to say; I'm just checking in to say that I'm not dead yet. My papers are impending, and I'm mildly attempting to work on them. Other than that, life is fun.

I need to rant, though. Kevin is visiting, and yesterday we were in the kitchen on my floor, making potato soup. This guy who lives on the floor, named Younès (he's from Morocco), came into the kitchen. I don't like him, because it seems to me that he's always trying to make me feel ill at ease. Other than that, he's too loud, yelling through the door rather than simply opening it and things like that. Anyway, I was cooking, and he asked if I had any onions. I responded, truthfully, that I had some in my room. He said that yes, my room smells like onions. I thought this very strange since first of all, it doesn't, and he's never been in my room! I said so, in English this time since we'd been speaking German and I wanted Kevin to be able to follow the conversation, and he responded "No, I've never been in your room - yet." That really pissed me off. What did he mean by that? I can only think that the intimation was sexual, and it very much disturbs me. I hope that Kevin's being here doesn't give him any ideas or anything. Anyway, I'm pretty confident of my ability to take care of myself, but if anything else happens I'm going to talk to Gabi or the Hausverwalter or both.

Other than that, though, life is good. I'll get back to it now, in case it gets bored without me and decides to wander off.

10 February 2001
Saturday

I have spent the whole afternoon working on my web page - incorporating styles into all my files and running them through a HTML validator... I really shouldn't have... But at least at the moment I can't really think of anything else I want to do with them. Or at least I'm trying to tell myself that.

As for the rest of life... I'm still working, when I'm not procrastinating that is. I'm really quite a horrible procrastinator. I did get a lot done yesterday, however, so I'm going to attempt to be as productive in the time I have left as I was yesterday. Positive thinking!

17 February 2001
Saturday

I've finally gotten my web page into something like working order, I think, after endless fiddling... Unfortunately, the more pages I have, the more trouble it takes whenever I decide to do a complete revamp. Argh.

I've done away with the frames on all pages except my journal. I haven't yet gotten that to work in Netscape. If you'd like to see what I'm working on (be prepared for it not to work!), it's here. [1]

So anyway, my web page is majorly under construction atm. Don't say I didn't warn you. And if you notice any links or anything that doesn't work, please please do tell me. I hate it when I break my own navigational links. :-(

And now I'm going to work on my paper, because I have set the goal for myself of 3 pages written today. Woohoo!

18 February 2001
Sunday

Okay, two entries in two days might be a little bit of overkill, but I felt bad for writing such short entries. My excuse is that I've been stressed out. Anyway, today I "finished" [2] my history paper, and I'm going to turn it in forKorrekturhilfe. [3] Then I get to continue working on my other paper, the one in English this time. That's even slightly worse, actually, because it's nearly impossible to find anything on my topic (Virginia Woolf's Orlando) in Germany, and because it's in English, I actually expect myself to write something that makes sense. Ouch. At least I have a tutor for this one, and I'm going to meet with her tomorrow, so perhaps we can make some progress together.

I don't want to think about that right now. I'd rather think about happier things! For example, last week was my first Valentine's Day with an actual Valentine! Don't get me wrong, I was never unhappy about being single (I wasn't even really looking for a boyfriend, until he just happened - {hug} Kevin), but it was a new thing for me. Right after I came back from England in January, I conceived the plan to visit Kevin for Valentine's Day, since I didn't think he was going to be able to visit me at the end of January like we'd planned before. I talked to his mum and bought the plane tickets for the 13th and 15th of February; I figured I could easily spare three days for a special occasion. However, plane fares were cheaper than expected, and Kevin did end up coming for nearly a week, so I lost more working time than I had wanted. Oops!

Anyway, the Valentine's Day trip was meant to be a surprise for Kevin. Unfortunately he guessed, partially because I'm horrible at keeping secrets (I can't help giving hints that I know something the other person doesn't, and getting as close as I can to telling without actually giving it away - except I usually do) and partially because his mum made my bed the day before. That was a dead giveaway, even if what I had said wasn't! It didn't matter, however, because he was pleased to see me.

So that was about my whole week. I had the usual fun and games with UK Immigration; because I paid a visit to the toilet (which was an adventure in itself), by the time I got there everyone was gone, so I sort of looked around in confusion. Then the guy who normally stands at the front of the line and tells everybody where to go came over from the window, where he'd been watching the airplanes, and started talking to me. I went to the front of the line (well, there wasn't any line, but bear with me <g>) and started filling out a landing card. The guy asked me what state I was from, and I said "Texas," whereupon he named a couple of snakes and lizards. He said he likes to ask people where they're from and see what reptiles live there! Okay, whatever floats his boat... The guy who processed me was actually pretty nice too; I didn't get the third degree like last time. He just asked where I was coming from, how long I was staying, and if I was going back to Hamburg then. No prob. I'm getting to be a pro at English immigration, though it did occur to me that if I keep on visiting Kevin this often, I'm going to run out of space in my passport for stamps! It's a rather disappointing thought, because this is my third passport in twelve years, and I got so much satisfaction from the thought that I wasn't going to have to renew my passport again for another decade.

I'm still working on getting the new version of my journal to work properly in Netscape. I've fixed two things; it now looks okay, because I've put a file that I'd forgotten back into the right place and changed the style sheet to have a background color instead of just an image. The journal is perfectly fine now, except that the background is blank orange instead of my sunset gif. I think I might just put that up anyway. I would, however, like to figure out why that particular page won't display correctly, while my other pages display fine in Netscape. I know it's not the style sheet, because I validated that with the W3C's Validator (careful, it's in German). [4] Besides, other things on the style sheet work. Or at least some of them. I guess I just have to accept that Netscape's support for styles is not as good as Internet Explorer's. Poot.

At least I can say that my page validates, and it's not my fault if your browser doesn't render it correctly. I, as a web designer, don't have ultimate control anyway.

I've made up my mind. I'm going to Take The Plunge and Ditch The Frames! Woohoo!

22 February 2001
Thursday

I've been sick and unproductive this week. Virginia Woolf is hard enough to write about when I'm healthy, and I've found it very hard to concentrate. I haven't been suffering very much, at least not from sickness (merely a sore throat), but I've had a fever, which is not good. Unfortunately I tend to ignore it when I have a fever and keep on going like normal, which doesn't help.

Today I decided to be sick and sleep and try to get better; it's a good thing I did, because it meant that I was home to get the message on my answering machine from the Museum der Arbeit about my internship! I wrote the application in the middle of January (the 18th I think was the date I put on it), and I'd thought that since I hadn't heard anything for a month, it was because they weren't interested. I was very surprised when I got this phone call! I called him back, and we made an appointment for the middle of March, for me to go by and see him. It sounded like he's sure about having me as an intern, and wants to talk about the details. However, I could be wrong. The reason I didn't hear anything for so long was that he only got the application yesterday, which I think was strange, but that's German bureaucracy for you; it had to filter up from his subordinates.

I got my history paper corrected, so I'm going to type up the corrections and print it out tonight. I want it to be done. It's not great, but it's good enough, and at this point that's all I care about.

And that's about all that's up with me...

27 February 2001
Tuesday

Orlando paper is done and turned in. It's not as good as I hoped it was going to be, but it's okay. You can read it if you want. Writing it was like using an iron rod to conduct acupuncture - the right idea, but it needs to be a lot more pointy.

My transcription is still not turned in, because even though it's done, I can't print it. There are no cables for the printer. I bought one and ordered the other, but I'll have to set that up and print it out later, because obviously the cable I ordered yesterday isn't here yet.

Yesterday I bought an industrial-strength hole-puncher for the Smith Center. All we had before was little cheap ones which punch about three holes before they go dull and weak. So I bought this one, which cost DM67,50 but punches holes like a dream. (I got reimbursed, anyway, so the money didn't come out of my pocket.)

Oh, btw, I've barely seen the Moroccan guy since that time a few weeks ago. I think he was just doing it for - pardon the expression - shits and giggles, as Maggie W. says. Just to get on my nerves. It's way too easy to do that to me. I don't mind people's teasing me most of the time, but when it turns malicious, it's just not okay.

Anyway, mostly my life right now is about recovering from the semester. Gabi wants me to start working on the website for the program... I told her I'd worry about that later. I can only think about so many things at one time. First I'm going to take a little bit of time for myself, get out of the Center for a while, sleep as much as I want, relax...

I need a break.

March 2001

[1] Be prepared for this link not to work if you try it too long after this entry was written, because it's up there only for test purposes (I can't do a server-side include if the page isn't on the server, obviously <g>), and once I get it working (or, perhaps, give up completely), I'm going to take it down. I may or may not remember to change this link.
[2] i.e. wrote enough that I got a couple of lines on the tenth page of a ten-page paper.
[3] I can't find a good word for this in English. It literally means "correction-help," which is what it is; it's going to be given to some poor German who's going to have to read through my tortured sentences and put them out of their misery. German has good words. Too bad I can't write very well with them. :-(
[4] Because it validates, I even got to put a fun little button at the bottom of my index page! Look And Be Amazed! Unfortunately the HTML doesn't validate, because it says I don't have a DOCTYPE declaration, which is untrue; all of my pages do. I would understand if the doctype were wrong, but it says I don't have one, though the validator somehow knows it's HTML 4.01 Transitional, which is what my DOCTYPE says...
No wait, I just clicked on a button at the bottom right of the page, and for some reason it now validates! What the heck? But I'm not going to push my luck; I'm just going to take the validation and run with it.
Wanna check the validation of this page? Just click this link.